SUCCESSORS IN
FAMILY BUSINESSES


  • Do you come from a business family?
  • Do you have experience with daily parental family business discussions?
  • Are you a major employer in your region?
  • Do family members of your friends and acquaintances work in your company?
  • Are you unsure about whether you want to work in your family business at some point in the future?
  • Are there few or no potential successors among your friends whom you can consult?
  • Do you have many important questions and thoughts but no idea whom to discuss them with?

Does any of that sound familiar to you? Then ask the WIFU!

We may not have all the answers to your questions, but we can help you find solutions and get to know other successors.

With our range of events, we can provide you with the opportunity to ask other successors about their decisions. You can also discuss crucial themes with us with the assurance of confidentially and neutrality.

It does not matter whether you want to enter operative business necessarily. Perhaps you would rather responsibly assume your role as a shareholder, now or in the future.

BENEFITS


  • Confidential discussions
  • Opportunity to meet successors
  • Food for thought
  • Self-reflection
  • A change in perspective

There are no stupid questions – you’re only stupid if you don’t ask.

EVENTS AND NETWORK


Our Family Business Forum series dedicates an entire annual event exclusively to issues experienced by successors. Participants can learn self-reflection techniques, gain inspiration from the experiences of the speakers and discuss their questions with other delegates in a safe environment.

Successors can register for the Succession Academy at the Witten Congress for Family Business. All of the activities and the surrounding programme are designed to provide new inspiration in an atmosphere of fun and learning. Getting to know successors from all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the biggest German-language family business congress is part of the programme, as are personal discussions.

The event format of the WIFU@Succession Camp, ongoing since 2020, is specifically designed for successors up to the age of 35. Succession is often only understood as a handover decision to manage a company: who will take over the management on day X, who will hand it over, and how is the ‘handover of the baton’ organised? However, this common view overlooks the fact that succession is not only to be carried out in the management of the company but also in the passing on of company shares. Reduction to a mere succession decision hides many succession dynamics in the business family that have shaped or still shape the lives of family members before the transfer of responsibility and also afterwards. Therefore, within the framework of the two-day WIFU@Succession Camp, a joint attempt is made to view succession as an ongoing process within a system. Within the various workshop units, the WIFU encourages participants to hold up a mirror and critically reflect on the question, ‘Where do I stand, and where are the others?’

Since 2021, the WIFU has offered the WIFU@Succession Regulars’ Table as an online event for representatives of the next generations of family businesses between the ages of 16 and 35 who are not yet active in the family business, who have recently joined the company or who are still undecided. The successors meet at regular intervals at a Zoom conference to discuss current issues and challenges.

CONTACT PERSON


Jun.-Prof. Dr. Anne Heider

Phone: +49 2302 926 534
Email: Anne.Heider@uni-wh.de

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